


For Calm

by ice_hot_13



Category: Top Gun (1986)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 02:43:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20332741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/pseuds/ice_hot_13
Summary: Things happened, and Pete left. Four years later, he's ready to face them.





	For Calm

**Author's Note:**

> I should be working on the fic i started like, a DAY ago, but here we are getting distracted already, with the saddest Ice.

Pete was ready. He hadn’t been ready four years ago, he was now able to admit that. Four years ago, when Ice – when Ice did what he did, Pete hadn’t been ready. He’d responded by leaving not only the state but the entire country; he had _run. _Literally. Ice had done – that thing that he did, and looked at Pete with the most anxious look in his eyes, and Pete had bolted from the room. But four years had passed, Pete had spent the first two in denial and the second two thinking, and then he’d looked up Ice’s service record and followed him back to Top Gun.

“What are _you _doing here?” It wasn’t the warm welcome Pete had been hoping for. As soon as he stepped out of Viper’s office, there was Ice, staring him down in the hallway.

“Didn’t they tell you?” Pete asked, although probably someone had, and that was why Ice was here, albeit as more of a send-him-home wagon than a welcome one. “I came to teach. And for-” _You, _he’d intended to say, but the frosty glare from Ice made him swallow the word. “You could look a little happier to see me, man.”

Ice clenched his jaw, looked away, then back at Pete. “You must be fucking kidding me,” he said, and then he was stalking away. And Pete hadn’t expected Ice to be _thrilled _he was back, exactly, but… something. Interest, maybe. Nostalgia? Pete hadn’t expected to leave the encounter thinking _well, at least he didn’t punch me. _

Pete wasn’t a quitter, though. He did, however, have an ounce of sense, so he gave Ice a few hours to calm down – Ice had a flight with students, and Pete taught his first class – and then went looking for Ice again. Finding him post-flight wasn’t Pete’s best idea; Ice out on the tarmac, in a flight suit and aviators, looking like Pete had only _just _left him standing there after what happened – Pete was already reeling.

“How’re the new kids?” Pete asked; he’d been sure he’d snuck up on Ice, but Ice didn’t even register surprise at the sound of Pete’s voice.

“Why did you come back, Mitchell?” Ice rounded on him, staring Pete down.

“You don’t exactly sound happy about it.”

“I was hoping I’d never see you again,” Ice said flatly, and admittedly, it stung a tiny bit. “What, did you not know I was here?”

“No, I knew…” Pete wanted to just – just stop making him upset. It was jarring, finding Ice so angry at him, but what the hell had Pete expected? It wasn’t like he could walk back in and find Ice just as Pete had left him.

“Then _what?”_

“About what… what happened…” Pete started, and Ice exhaled a sharp breath, gave a rueful laugh.

“Fuck, Mav, it was four years ago. Can you just let it go? Let me just – fucking – be humiliated in peace?”

“But I can’t just…” Pete was never at a loss for words, but here he was, stammering and forgetting everything he’d wanted to say. “Why would you be-”

“_Why? _Why am I humiliated that I tried to _kiss _you? Do you really need help figuring that out?” He ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head. “Look, just – drop it. I won’t do anything like that ever again, you don’t have to worry.”

“Ice, no.” This was quickly getting away from Pete, and he wasn’t going to have the kind of conversation where Ice walked away with the wrong idea. Pete didn’t _do _misunderstandings like that, he spit out everything he wanted to say quickly, before anyone could leave without knowing what he’d meant to say. “Ice, I came back because back then, I wasn’t ready for – for any of that. But now-”

“Now you are? And you think I’ve been here waiting for that to happen? You _ran away _from me, and you think you can just come back here and I’ll still be stupid enough to have feelings for you? You should have just called, I could have saved you the flight.”

And, well. Then he was walking away, with a completely accurate idea of what just happened, and Pete didn’t really know what to do anymore. Four years ago, standing in the shade of a plane, Ice had kissed Pete.

“Please don’t get mad,” he’d said, and then he’d leaned in and kissed Pete. When Ice had looked at him – it was the most powerful Pete had ever felt, Ice staring at him like his heart was in Pete’s hands, and it was all far too much for Pete to handle. He could take standoffish, harsh Ice; he couldn’t take Ice looking at him like this, nervous and scared and plaintively hopeful. _Please don’t get mad, _Ice said, because that was the worst outcome he could picture, but he was wrong. What Pete did – running away, breaking Ice by dropping him on the spot, that was so much worse.

\--

Ice was avoiding him. That was pretty obvious, because Pete was trying very hard to stay near him. For two weeks, Ice refused to acknowledge him, to the point of completely ignoring cups of coffee Pete brought him, paperwork he tried to pass along, and even Pete calling his name across the parking lot. Pete didn’t even want to win him back – well, he _did, _of course he did – what he really wanted was to apologize. Ice had been so young and brave, and Pete had been just – so _not ready. _

He was ready four years too late. That was made obvious to him on Saturday night of the third week, when he walked by a restaurant on the pier and saw that Ice was out on a date. Pete stopped in his tracks, stared across the walkway at the window. Ice was having dinner with – with another man. It confirmed two things, with horribly unshakeable certainty: he was too late, and he was definitely ready to accept his feelings for Ice, because he couldn’t ignore the way this made his heart _break. _

Pete was fully aware that at one time, he’d have seen this as a challenge. He’d have thrown himself into flirting and wooing and _everything _he could think of, but – maybe it was a sign that he was growing up, because he could step back and see the futility of it. Some things were unwinnable. Sometimes, he just couldn’t come out on top. He was going to lose people, and in this way, Ice was one of them.

\--

Maybe he should have left Top Gun, but Pete really did enjoy teaching. The whole point of coming back – finding Ice again – didn’t matter anymore, but Pete still wanted to stay. Ice may not want him, but at least he felt useful here. He stopped trying to get Ice to pay attention to him and just went about doing his job, hating how the runway made him think about Ice kissing him.

It was just – Pete really had liked Ice. Really had feelings for him. Ice was sharp, but he was also oddly sincere, quietly sweet. It was awful to fall in love with him in retrospect, to realize that everything Pete had done, it had been because he _liked _Ice. It was to look back at himself and think _so that’s what I’m like when I’m in love, _because apparently, that’s how Pete responded – letting himself be drawn to Ice, getting his attention any way possible, bringing Ice towards him any way he knew how. Pete had been a hurricane, pulling Ice in and then, in the eye of it all, Ice kissing him – and then Pete was a storm again, wrecking everything in his haste to get away.

However Pete was expecting things to go, it wasn’t like this: Ice showing up after a hop, storming up to Pete as he did a post-flight check of his plane.

“Since when do you give up on things?” Ice demanded, and Pete blinked at him.

“You understand I wasn’t the student pilot, right?” he asked, “I was _supposed _to let them get a lock on me.”

“You get yourself a teaching position here,” Ice went on, as if Pete hadn’t said anything, “with the express intention of – of picking up where we left off, and then you – you _give up? _You don’t _give up _on things, Mav!” And suddenly, all the fight went out of him. “Why am I the only thing you give up on?” Ice asked, so quiet it was almost like he was thinking out loud.

“That’s not what happened,” Pete said. “Ice – this isn’t an excuse, but I was so young and scared. I didn’t give up on wanting you, I didn’t even know I _did, _yet. I didn’t realize.”

“Not then,” Ice crossed his arms over his chest, like he was going for aggressive but just looked defensive, guarded, like maybe he wanted to leave.

“You don’t mean – now? You think I’m giving up _now?” _Pete’s shoulders slumped. “I saw you on your date, Ice. I’m not here to fuck up your life, if you’re dating someone else, I’m not going to do some – crazy, dramatic thing to break you up.”

“You don’t have to,” Ice huffed, “God, Pete, you _already _fuck up every date I go on! For – for _years! _I try and date people and I just compare them to you. You fucking _broke _me, I can’t – I can’t want anyone else. I don’t feel enough for them, and _you – _why can you still do this?”

“I’m sorry,” Pete said, and he _meant _it. He’d felt it back then, realized the full weight of it now: when it came to Ice, Pete was powerful, and when Pete hurt him, it had been devastating. Maybe he’d spent the past four years searching for his own calm reprieve from it all, too. 

“You always do something – some big, daring thing, to get what you want, all brave and stupid, and just – where is _that?_” Ice demanded, and Pete didn’t know what to tell him, how to explain that now that it really mattered, now that it was something Pete _needed, _all his bravado fell short. It was easier to be brave with his life on the line; his heart was so much more fragile.

“I don’t deserve you,” Pete said, mostly to himself. He was thinking about Ice of four years ago, how brave he’d been. Ice had risked heartbreak and humiliation, and he’d survived both when they followed.

“Listen to me, Mav,” Ice said, and he grabbed the front of Pete’s flight suit, held it in one fist. “Don’t – don’t get mad,” he said, and there was the faintest pleading note, hidden away, “don’t run away to another fucking country and avoid me for four years. Don’t fucking _do _that to me,” he said, and then Ice – sweet, brave Ice – kissed Pete again.

This time, the storm inside Pete calmed, quieted. This time, he kissed Ice back.

“You’re so much fucking braver than me,” he whispered, when Ice drew back to gauge his reaction. Ice shook his head.

“I’m also a better pilot,” he said; he still hadn’t released Pete, fingers tight in his flight suit like he didn’t want to let go. “You fucked me up,” Ice whispered, and there it was again, the anxiety pooled in his eyes, the cracked-open hopefulness. “You still could.”

“I came back because I couldn’t live without you,” Pete said, “so if it helps, you fucked me up too.”

“Mutually assured destruction doesn’t make me feel better,” Ice said, but he was smiling just slightly, like maybe it did. For all the storming of before, when Ice looked at him like that, all Pete felt was calm.

“I like you so much I’ll destroy us both,” he said, and while at one time, that had felt true and terrifying, it was suddenly comforting. Pete loved Ice; it had changed everything, destroyed their world in its storm, and built a new one. For the first time in four years, maybe longer, Pete felt calm.


End file.
